The once abundant Coho salmon and
Steelhead trout native to the Monterey Bay are now
endangered. In particular, Coho populations have fallen
nearly 99% in the last or so 70 years, and their
continued existence is very much in doubt.

Public (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, NOAA) and private organizations and
individuals are trying to preserve and restore these
magnificent and important fish, whose numbers have been
so reduced by both human-made and natural causes.

At the Nov. 13 RBDA meeting, Matt Hayes of the
non-profit Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project
(MBSTP), based in Swanton, and local Certified Fisheries
Scientist Don Alley, of D.W. Alley & Associates,
will detail the efforts to save these salmonids, and
educate us on their complicated life cycles.

Founded in 1976, MBSTP operates a hatchery and rearing
facility in Swanton to supplement natural production of
Coho Salmon and Steelhead, and saltwater net pens in
Moss Landing and Monterey harbors to acclimate Chinook
salmon fingerlings obtained from the Feather River
Hatchery to the ocean. To teach young people about the
life cycle, habitat requirements, conservation and
global importance of anadromous salmonid fish MTSTP runs
an educational program for local K-12 schools.

For 30 years, Don Alley (left, with California giant
salamander) has devoted his career to monitoring and
studying populations and habitat conditions of
Steelhead, Coho and the also-endangered Tidewater Goby
in California coastal watersheds and lagoons. He
consults on environmental impact reports and fish
management and enhancement plans for private and public
clients on the Central California Coast. He is one of,
if not the leading expert on Coho and Steelhead, and we
are very grateful to him for coming to talk to us about
this fascinating and important subject.

Matt Hayes, who is on the board of the MBSTP and is its
Steelhead Trapping Coordinator and Media Liaison, will
explain the importance of his organization’s work to the
environment and to both sport and commercial fishermen,
and show how MTSTP goes about it.

Except for the hatchery manager, MBSTP is an
all-volunteer organization that depends on donations.
For information about helping out at MBSTP, call
Volunteer Coordinator Mary Hermansky at 831-331-5586, or
email mhermansky@cs.com.

Conserving
Cemex Redwoods

The California Coastal Conservancy has approved a grant
of $2 million to be used to preserve and open up to
public access the 8,532 acres, mainly forest above
Davenport, that was the former Cemex land holding. The
RBDA had written a letter in support of this important
grant as it represents an unparalleled opportunity to
preserve a massive sweep of North Coast mountains
adjacent to and in Bonny Doon.

The Coastal Conservancy also awarded $100,000 to the
Land Trust of Santa Cruz County that will help fund a
$250,000 public access plan for the property. The Land
Trust is already working with a consultant and plans to
have a draft ready by next summer. The hope is that
public access to some areas will be available in 2 to 3
years. Both the County of Santa Cruz and the Costal
Conservancy will review the public access plan prior to
its implementation.

Land Trust Conservation Director Bryan Largay will once
again be at the next RBDA meeting, on Nov. 13, to expand
on how Bonny Doon residents can make their voices heard
as part of this planning process. The Land Trust expects
to have a website up to take public input on the plan,
and Bryan will elaborate on what the Land Trust hopes to
accomplish in this public input process. It is expected
that, due to ecological concerns, car camping and
motorized off-road vehicles, including dirt bikes, will
be off the table, but the conservation groups that
control the property want to explore a variety of other
uses.

Public access is also complicated by the fact that
continued timber logging is expected to play an
important role in continuing to finance the property.
While the logging will only involve a relatively small
portion, the Land Trust's experience can be valuable in
that area: it manages the Byrne-Milliron Forest above
Corralitos, which is also open to the public and subject
to periodic timber harvests.

The planning process for public access is described
briefly in the four phases outlined as follows:

Phase 1.
Information gathering, (Fall 2013 and Winter 2014)During this phase
anyone interested in the plan may complete a
questionnaire. The Land Trust will also interview
certain affected parties, such as owners of adjacent
lands, emergency services, and others. Two small group
meetings will be held, one for education and research
interests, and one for representatives of recreational
user groups. During this period various technical
assessments will also be conducted.Phase 2. Opportunities
and constraints summary (Spring 2014)The findings from Phase
1 will be combined into a summary of the opportunities
and constraints on the property. These will be
presented at a Community Meeting in early spring.
Public input will be welcome at that meeting and
during the following month.Phase 3. Draft plan
(Summer 2014)Public input will be
combined with feasibility analysis to develop a draft
plan. This will be presented at a Community Meeting in
the early summer. Public input will be welcome at that
meeting and during the following month.Phase 4. Final plan and
implementation (Fall 2014-Fall 2015)Input from the public,
follow-up analysis and decision making by partners
will lead to the Final Plan. Components to be
implemented will be submitted to Santa Cruz County for
regulatory compliance, which is anticipated to take
about a year.

Please join us on Nov. 13
to hear how you can have a voice in helping to formulate
the planning process for public access to this major new
public open space that is part of our neighborhood.

Hotel (Davenport) California? Could the shuttered Davenport cement plant become
the gateway to the Cemex Redwoods property? Or a hotel?
Or both?

Sempervirens Fund, one of the conservation groups that
helped purchase the Cemex Redwoods property has received
a grant from the Center for Creative Land Recycling to
check out possible pollution at the plant, how much it
might cost to remove, and how to pay for it, with a view
toward acquiring it. Cemex is still responsible for
decommissioning the plant and making it safe. Among
possible contaminants are asbestos dust, mercury,
gasoline and diesel fuel, and the 850,000 tons of cement
kiln dust piled up and tarped outside the plant.

Cemex is due to file a plant cleanup plan for approval
by the County in 2014.

It certainly would be a boon to the Davenport economy to
have the hulking plant converted into a useful asset,
such as a hotel, and could solve the challenge of
focusing public access to the Cemex Redwoods property
without impacting residential neighborhoods in Davenport
or Bonny Doon. But people might like it so much they
would never leave.

Castle House Proposal Scaled Back

In the face of opposition from neighbors and the RBDA,
the application to hold weddings at the Castle House and
Garden, at 4286 Bonny Doon Road, has been scaled back
from 12 to 6 weddings a year, with a maximum of 49
guests rather than 100, and ending by 7 p.m. instead of
10.

We appreciate Castle House proprietor Teresa Sabankaya’s
efforts to make her proposal more acceptable, but
neighbors and the RBDA Board are still opposed to the
application. We are unalterably against people turning
their properties in residential neighborhoods into
commercial event venues. We think it is unfair for one
property owner to benefit financially at the expense of
his/her neighbors, and it is a bad precedent for Bonny
Doon.

The Castle House is in a residential zone. The
regulations for home occupations in such zones allow
many types of business pursuits, albeit with
restrictions on hours, noise, traffic, etc. County Code
13.10.613 states that the purpose of the regulations is
“1. To allow persons to carry on limited,
income-producing activities on their residential
property; and 2. To protect nearby residential
properties from potential adverse effects of the allowed
activity by not allowing home occupations that would
create excessive noise, traffic, public expense or any
nuisance.”

If a residential property owner wants to exceed those
limits, or conduct a business that is restricted by that
section of code, he/she must apply for a “discretionary”
permit, which requires a public hearing conducted by the
Zoning Administrator (so-called Level 5).

Because of the level of opposition that the Castle House
proposal has generated, the Planning Dept. has decided
that this application must be approved by the Planning
Commission, called a Level 6 approval.

Without a permit, the Sabankayas have hosted a number of
weddings over the past couple of summers. When some
neighbors complained, in August the Planning Dept.
ordered the Sabankayas to apply for permits but gave
them permission to continue to host weddings already
booked through October 2013. It told them not to book
any new weddings. Upon learning that they continued to
advertise on the Web and book weddings beyond that date,
the County sent a second letter on Sept. 19 telling them
to “fully comply with the code.” Subsequent to that the
Web site was taken down and the new, reduced proposal
was made.
UCSC Water EIR Goes Down the Drain

It was a horrible Halloween for UCSC in Santa Cruz
Superior Court Oct. 31, as Judge Paul Marigonda upheld a
State Court of Appeal decision that the EIR for its
application to supply water to the North Campus was
inadequate because several alternatives were not
considered.

Now, the City of Santa Cruz, which is a co-applicant,
and UCSC will have to begin work on the EIR once again,
and get it certified, before the application can come
back for approval to LAFCO, the Lo- cal Agency Formation
Commission. This will be costly, and time-consuming,
especially given the fact that significant events
regarding the City’s water supply have occurred in the
interim, so all that information will have to be
reconsidered and brought up to date.

Combined with the failure of the City’s desalination
plant proposal and the imminent large reduction in the
water supply due to the requirement to keep more flow in
the North Coast creeks and the San Lorenzo River to
provide improved Coho and Steelhead habitat, it now
seems that there is an even better chance that LAFCO,
the Local Agency Formation Commission, will place severe
restrictions and conditions on any approval of UCSC’s
application for water to supply the huge planned North
Campus development.

The EIR suit was brought by Habitat and Watershed
Caretakers, HAWC, a local citizens’ group.

Apple Exec Mansion Goes Mini

Robert Mansfield, a top hardware executive at Apple, has
announced plans for a new mini: a more palatable, scaled
back version of the proposed huge mansion at his
property on Moore Ranch Road, off Smith Grade. In an
Aug. 19 letter to the Planning Dept., his
representative, Jonathan Swift, wrote that, “The
proposal plans have changed drastically to reflect a
significantly smaller dwelling [and] fewer accessory
structures.”

The original Mansfield proposal attempted by various
technicalities to keep the proposal from being subject
to the County Large Dwelling Ordinance (County Code
Section 13.10.325), which involves much more scrutiny
than smaller projects, in order to help “preserve the
neighborhood character in which the proposed house is
located.”

At the time of the application 2 years ago, the
ordinance was triggered by buildings larger than 7,000
square feet, and the language describing what portions
of a building are considered habitable was confusing and
contradictory. By such ploys as lowering the ceiling
heights of certain rooms, the Mansfield proposal claimed
the house would only be 6,774 square feet. In reality it
would have been closer to 9,000 square feet.

The RBDA Board asked the County to clarify the
definitions of habitable space, and to reduce the size
of a dwelling that must be reviewed under the ordinance
to 5,000 square feet.

We opposed the Mansfield proposal because it would have
been 12 feet higher than the maximum allowed height;
would have been sited close to the edge of a prominent
bluff overlooking popular trails on Wilder Ranch; that
the property it is to be built on is under an Open Space
Easement; and that Mansfield sought to use what amounts
to sleight-of-hand to avoid triggering the Large
Dwelling Ordinance.

The details of the Large Dwelling Ordinance is
critically important to Bonny Doon because already two
7,000 square foot houses, divided up into many small
rooms, and rented out mainly to college students, have
been built here in the past couple of years. Essentially
boarding houses, they have had a large negative impact
on their neighbors. We are totally opposed to this type
of structure, and sought the County’s help in regulating
it as far as possible. (Unfortunately, California State
law prevents local jurisdictions from limiting the
number of people who can live in dwelling.)

Supervisor Neal Coonerty agreed to help us and was
influential in getting other provisions of the ordinance
changed earlier this year so that any dwelling larger
than 5,000 square feet now comes under the regulation’s
scrutiny.

The new Mansfield proposal is for a 3,768 square foot
house, 23 rather than 35 feet high, and moved back about
29 feet further from the edge of the bluff, making it
much less apparent from Wilder Ranch. As such, the
project is no longer of concern to the RBDA Board.

Court Blocks Public Input on Coast Dairies
Subdivision

Our attempt to force a public hearing on a planned
subdivision by Coast Dairies & Land Corporation
(CDLC) was rejected in Superior Court on Oct. 21.

Along with Save Our Agricultural Lands (SOAL) and some
North Coast individuals, the RBDA has been trying to
force a public hearing which could better protect the
town of Davenport’s water supply and allow local input
on infrastructure required for the new parcels CDLC is
creating on the portion of Coast Dairies used for
farming.

The Superior Court made its ruling (notwithstanding a
Court of Appeal decision which seemed to indicate
otherwise) that the division of the Coast Dairies
property into 7 or more parcels doesn’t qualify as a
“subdivision.”

After failing to convince the County of our opinion, the
RBDA/SOAL et al hired attorney Bill Parkin of Wittwer
Parkin, LLP, to pursue the matter. The RBDA and the
other plaintiffs are reviewing the ruling with Parkin as
to whether it should be appealed.

Why is this important? Because it involves ownership of
the water rights to San Vicente Creek, which is
Davenport’s water supply, preservation of farming on the
parcels rather than selling them off for expensive
residences, and protecting Davenport residents from the
use of harmful chemicals on the farms adjoining the
town.

CDLC, a non-profit entity set up by the Trust for Public
Land, still owns the 6,000 acres of Coast Dairies on the
inland side of Highway 1. (The seaside portion, 407
acres, was transferred to State Parks in 2006.) CDLC
wants to transfer the remaining portion to the federal
Bureau of Land Management, but BLM won’t take the
agricultural parcels.

TPL acquired Coast Dairies in 1998. Many people,
including us, have been frustrated by the long delay in
opening large portions of it to public recreational
uses. However, we feel it is important to guarantee that
this precious property be managed properly, and want the
public, including ourselves, to have input into such
issues as roads, parking, water use, wastewater
treatment and utilities. The lawsuit has already forced
TPL to cement into legally binding restrictions on
offroad vehicles, mining and other protections.

Help Keep Bonny Doon Wonderful

The reason Bonny Doon continues to be such a great place
to live, besides of course, the many warm-hearted,
caring, community-minded people who live here, is the
RBDA, which since 1957 has striven, successfully, to
protect the quality of life and the nature of Bonny
Doon.

The RBDA’s work is carried out by its Board. Over the
years the many dedicated people who have served on it
have done the heavy lifting in keeping Bonny Doon “rural
and natural,” as our slogan says.

Without active participation, not just support (which of
course we greatly appreciate) from the residents of
Bonny Doon, there could have been many developments—golf
courses, tract housing, event centers—that would have
horribly changed the nature of our community.

Over the years the RBDA has helped preserve large areas
like the Ecological Reserve, Coast Dairies and Gray
Whale Ranch, and fought off the expansion of the former
Cemex limestone quarry.

To continue this work every year we need new people to
step up and commit to serving on the Board.

If you want to help this effort, contact Lad Wallace,
chair of our nominating committee, 515-3077, or via our
website here. The work is engrossing and rewarding, and
besides, we are a fun group of people to get to know.

Nominations take place at the Nov. 13 RBDA meeting. The
terms of Lad, Joe Christy and Ted Benhari are up Jan. 8.

Members who need an absentee ballot for the Board
election must request it from the Membership Coordinator
by Dec. 15.

Removing Trees Damaged in Martin Fire

If you have trees that were impacted either by the 2008
Martin Road Fire or the subsequent pine beetle
infestation you can still remove them without paying for
and obtaining a permit for each tree or stand.

Matt Johnston of the County Planning Dept. says the
March 2011 “blanket tree removal permit” is still in
effect, but only through next March. You still must fill
out and submit a form to the department’s Environmental
Coordinator, and must follow certain rules. Trees must
be in danger of falling on a structure, path or roadway,
and must be stressed or dying from the fire or
infestation by the pine beetle. You can also remove
healthy trees to improve the ponderosa pine forest, but
that must be done under the supervision of the Dept. of
Forestry and Fire Protection.

For questions or to obtain a form, phone Matt Johnston
at 454-3201, or email him at PLN458@co.santa-cruz.ca.us.

Support
the RBDA by renewing your membership now: all
1-year memberships expire on January 31st.

Ideas
for RBDA Meeting Topics

We are always open to suggestions for interesting
programs and speakers at our bimonthly (except July)
RBDA public meetings.What are you interested in? Local flora and fauna,
gardening, environmental and political issues, Bonny
Doon history or geology, public safety?What were some of your favorite speakers or
presentations at past RBDA meetings?Were there any that you would like us to repeat?Please email us with your ideas and comments at board@rbda.us.

Bonny Doon's
voice in preserving our special quality of
life,
The Highlander is mailed free to Bonny Doon
residents prior to the
RBDA General Meetings, which are usually
held on second Wednesdays of
January, March, May, July, September and
November.
We encourage you to participate.

Send
mail correspondence to the Highlander Editor
at the above address,
or by email, below.